Diamonds Are Forever (1971)

December 18, 1971

A Benign Bond:007 Stars in 'Diamonds Are Forever'

By VINCENT CANBY

Published: December 18, 1971

"Diamonds Are Forever," the eighth James Bond movie, the seventh to be produced by Albert R. Broccoli and Harry Saltzman, and the sixth to star Sean Connery, is a nostalgic journey down memory lane—by jet, by helicopter, by hearse, by moon machine, and by bare foot across deep-pile rugs to king-sized beds in hotel rooms as big as Nevada.

A lot of things have changed since "You Only Live Twice" (1967), the last real Bond adventure, but 007 has remained a steadfast agent for the military-industrial complex, a friend to the C.I.A. and a triumphant sexist. It's enough to make one weepy with gratitude. I mean, not everything must be mutable.

"Diamonds Are Forever" is also great, absurd fun, not only because it recalls the moods and manners of the sixties (which, being over, now seem safely comprehensible), but also because all of the people connected with the movie obviously know what they are up to.

This includes Mr. Connery, who must reconcile himself to the fact that nothing becomes him as much as the character he wanted to leave; Guy Hamilton, the director, whose "Goldfinger" was the best of the earlier Bonds; Richard Maibaum and Tom Mankiewicz, who know exactly when a screenplay should make sense and when it's a waste of time, and Maurice Bender, the designer of the main titles that so brilliantly reflect the make-belive violence, vulgarity and humor of the film that follows.

The story, which may or may not have much to do with Ian Fleming's novel published here in 1956, begins as a conventional diamond smuggling caper but quickly evolves into another one of the positively immortal Blofeld's schemes to dominate the world, this time by something that I can only describe as a death-ray-carrying, diamond-encrusted sputnik.

The locales shift from London to South Africa to Amsterdam, before more or less settling down in Las Vegas, which, with its disposable facades, its arbitrary payoffs, its magnificent assortment of available women, and its implication that this is civilization's end, is the perfect setting for the kind of doomsdays that always threaten Bond's world.

In addition to several Blofelds (all played by Charles Gray), the characters include a nice little old lady named Mrs. Whistler, who teaches school to South Africans when she is not smuggling diamonds to Europe; two gentle gunmen, who are fond of their jobs (and in love with each other); a mysterious Las Vegas millionaire named Willard Whyte (played by Jimmy Dean); a couple of butch beauties named Thumper and Bambi, and Lana Wood and Jill St. John, as the two principal women in James's life.

The movie's momentum is such that one never has much time to react to its lack of reason, only to its sensations of speed and narrow escape, and to the splendor of its crazy gadgets and décor. It may be that I've become jaded, or that I've forgotten the details of all but the last (and worst) Bond film ("On His Majesty's Secret Service," which featured a vivid sequence in which a man got chopped up by the blades of a snow-removal machine), but "Diamonds Are Forever" does seem comparatively benign. I'd almost call it a movie to play hookey for.